I haven’t mentioned my friend Kellerlemming in quite a while and wouldn’t want you to think that her life – or her life in relation to mine – has drawn to an end. Quite the opposite, it seems to have taken a turn, a twist, in a strange direction. She has babies: three of them. Small, bald and pink and none of them expected.

Now, before you start getting the wrong idea, let me give you a little bit of the background story. A little over a week ago her Dad heard that there was a certain animal which had been dumped by its owners, in a cardboard box, and then rescued before being brought to an animal shelter.

A ferret. Now, I don’t know a great deal about ferrets – I’ve already mentioned a few times that I am a cat person – but Kellerlemming does and she literally goes overboard when anyone starts talking about them.

Anyway. Her Dad got in touch with the animal center and, after a bit of wrangling because someone else also wanted to adopt, he drove there, signed a contract and brought it back home. The center told him, Kellerlemming tells me, that the new addition to their family had a phantom pregnancy, which is probably why the last owners packed it in that cardboard box and dumped it out in the wilds to die.

Phantom pregnancy? Last night the small thing – which has no name at the moment – decided that the time was ripe and gave birth to three little bald things. I must admit, they are cute in their helplessness, and their mother is also cute, inquisitive and very protective. Every time someone comes to take a look at her little ones she starts picking them up in her mouth and carrying them off to a new hiding place.

Three surprises in one shot, but it could have been up to sixteen! Now her Dad, who has been renovating the house anyway – as I told you a while back – has to do a bit more. Kellerlemming has decided to keep all three, making her small family one of five including the unwitting adoptive father. They’re going to get their own room (!) and everything.

Some people are just naturals when it comes to animals; some deserve to be throttled.

Update! Now it’s four, but where the fourth little ferret baby came from …